An Uphill Battle

As you know from my When You Aren’t Getting Results post, I was stuck. Well, I’m happy to say that on Sunday, I was down 1.4 lbs, despite having a sushi cheat meal on Friday. Last week, I felt the most positive that I have felt in a while. Today is a different story.

I skipped the gym and didn’t follow my meal plan today. I wasn’t particularly stressed or tired. The only way I can describe today is feeling utter apathy about everything I’m doing. I feel like all I do is bust my ass. I work all day, come home and study/do homework, then go kill myself in the gym for 2 hours. I come home, go to sleep, and then repeat the next day. It wears me out. I’m overscheduled, overworked, and overtrained. And most of the time, I feel profoundly alone. There have literally been weekends that have passed where I have not spoken a single word to another human being because I have spent the entire weekend cooped up in my apartment studying, writing a paper, cleaning, and going to the gym. I’m an introvert by nature and definitely need some time to myself on a regular basis, but too much alone time is downright depressing. However, I also feel that it is a necessary evil in order to accomplish all of the things I have committed myself to, which leads me to wonder…

What am I doing all of this for? A trophy? A generous paycheck? To say I have a Master’s degree? To be super fit? None of these things felt very valuable or important today, for whatever reason. Today, I just wanted to eat without thinking about calories and to spend some time doing nothing. Well, mission accomplished. Do I feel any better? No. Now I just feel like today is a wasted day, and I’m going to have to work that much harder and longer to reclaim the ground I lost.

I know that I won’t feel this way forever. I know that regardless of how I feel, I still have the freedom to make rational choices. The way I see it is that I have a long, steep climb up a mountain. Sometimes I can see the peak and my direction and intentions are clear; other times, the peak is obscured and I feel lost and unmotivated. Today, I lost sight of the top and backslid. Now, I have a choice to make:

Give up and head downhill back to the bottom – take the easy way out and live with myself knowing that I quit

Wallow in self-pity and continue to stay stuck or backslide

Pick myself up, dust myself off, reconnect with the peak I’m striving to reach, and acknowledge the setback as part of the journey

Being honest about the times I struggle is difficult and seeking out support is even harder. As a perfectionist, I have a hard time being open about my flaws. I’ve become accustomed to relying on myself and can be stubborn about asking for help from others. I also feel pressure to be a positive role model. But alas, I am human. I’ve been treating myself like a machine, and perhaps that is part of the problem.

I’m going to reconnect with my long term goals and purpose, then tie those things back to my day to day. I’m not doing all of this for nothing, and just because for one 24 hour period, my goals don’t feel that important, doesn’t mean that they aren’t. Yes, I still have a lot of hard work ahead of me, but I have faith that when I do finally reach the peak, I will look back at all I have accomplished and look out at my view from the top and know it was all worth while.